Prisoners at 11 state facilities began refusing meals early
Monday, after months of plotting a demonstration which they hope
will bring change to a number of longstanding grievances against
the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation -
particularly the practice of indefinitely housing some detainees
in total isolation.

In a letter obtained by the LA Times, protesters reportedly
demanded that the state retire its current solitary confinement
policies and allow inmates accused of prison gang involvement to
spend a maximum of only five years in isolation. Currently there
is no limit on how long inmates thought to be connected to
internal gangs can spend in Segregated Housing Units (SHUs).
According to the LA Times, 4,527 inmates at four state prisons
are now living in such units - including 1,180 at Pelican Bay
State Prison in northern California, where the demonstration was
hatched.

“The principal prisoner representatives from the PBSP SHU
Short Corridor Collective Human Rights Movement do hereby present
public notice that our nonviolent peaceful protest of our
subjection to decades of indefinite state-sanctioned torture, via
long term solitary confinement will resume
today...consisting of a hunger strike/work stoppage of
indefinite duration until CDCR signs a legally binding agreement
meeting our demands, the heart of which mandates an end to
long-term solitary confinement (as well as additional major
reforms)," reads the letter, which is posted on Prisoner
Hunger Strike Solidarity website.

The media report states that inmates are also seeking education
and rehabilitation programs, as well as the right to make monthly
phone calls.

Prisoners in California have held similar protests before,
including a 2011 hunger strike which originated at Pelican Bay
and eventually accumulated the support of 6,000 inmates across
the state.

That hunger strike eventually led to a class-action lawsuit being
filed against the corrections department, which has recently
entered a mediation phase. But two years after the lawsuit
against the state originated, prisoners still aren’t satisfied
with the response they’ve received.

“While the CDCR has claimed to have made reforms to its SHU
system — how a prisoner ends up in the solitary units, for how
long, and how they can go about getting released into the general
population — prisoners’ rights advocates and family members point
out that the CDCR has potentially broadened the use of solitary
confinement, and that conditions in the SHUs continue to
constitute grave human rights violations,” reads their latest
letter.

The state does not officially recognize a hunger strike until
participants have refused nine consecutive meals. On Monday,
corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton told the LA Times that
30,000 prisoners skipped breakfast and lunch, putting them on
course to launch an actual strike by the middle of the week.

Despite gearing towards what could become the largest hunger
strike in state history, Thornton said that "everything has
been running smoothly.”

"It was normal. There were no incidents,” at Monday's
protest, Thornton said. But according to the newspaper’s Paige
St. John, around 2,300 prisoners aren't just skipping meals -
they're also beginning to skip work and class.

Ms. Thornton did not immediately respond about the status of the
budding strike when approached by RT early Tuesday.

According to the inmates, the California prison system currently
holds over 10,000 prisoners in solitary confinement units,
including dozens who have spent more than 20 years each in
isolation. Gabriel Reyes, who has spent 16 years in an SHU, wrote
a letter published this week by Truth-Out. “I understand I
broke the law, and I have lost liberties because of that. But no
one, no matter what they've done, should be denied fundamental
human rights, especially when that denial comes in the form of
such torture," he wrote.

Reyes is currently serving a sentence of 25-years-to-life for
burgling an unoccupied swelling. He says that the prison’s
determination of a “gang affiliation” has left him
spending 22.5 hours a day in isolation.